The present invention relates to e-commerce systems and, specifically, to a highly distributed system for large-scale content and e-commerce transactions over global computer networks, such as the internet.
The network economy is rapidly taking shape, and electronic commerce (eCommerce) is at the forefront of this emerging paradigm. The eCommerce opportunity is expected to explode to over
A closer examination reveals the bulk of the spending activity associated with business-to-business eCommerce will originate from the acquisition of xe2x80x9coperating resourcesxe2x80x9d, the goods and services required to operate an enterprise.
Acquiring operating resources is ideal for eCommerce because traditionally they are acquired in a manual, paper-intensive mannerxe2x80x94prone to error, mistakes and inefficiencies. The expected savings associated with reducing the costs of acquiring operating resources ranges from 5-15%. Considering the dollars spent by a typical manufacturing corporation, resulting savings can have a significant bottom line benefit.
Conventionally, though, each supplier is xe2x80x9con its ownxe2x80x9d to provide its own buying relationship with customers. This has the disadvantage the supplier""s system is not linked into the buyer""s processes (e.g., for approval and procurement). Thus, a system like OBI (Open Buying on the Internet, see http://openbuy.org) is desirable to xe2x80x9cgluexe2x80x9d the supplier""s system to the buyer""s system. Unfortunately, OBI still has the disadvantage that the end user doesn""t necessarily know which supplier has the goods he wants. This is a fundamental failing of basic OBI, since a primary task an end-user must perform when purchasing something is to find what he wants.
In order to deliver the expected benefits associated with business-to-business eCommerce, it is desirable that a solution provide:
Enterprise Connection of Users, Processes and Systems
Scalable Connection of Buyers and Suppliers.
The Operating Resource Management System (ORMS), from Ariba Technologies, Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. is a customer-driven solution that enables buying organizations to achieve significant savings in acquiring operating resources. The Ariba ORMS is described in detail in referenced International Application No. PCT/US98/08407 filed Apr. 27, 1998 of which this application is a continuation-in-part and the contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. An example of how the Ariba ORMS is used within an enterprise is provided in FIG. 1. The Ariba ORMS can do the following:
Network Enabling Buyers;
Capturing Procurement Processes and Spending;
Network Enabling Enterprise Systems.
Conventionally, buying organizations use the Ariba ORMS to enable their corporate community of users, approvers and related departments to acquire all of their operating resources via a single, common networked infrastructure. The Ariba ORMS executes on a customer""s corporate intranet. Ariba ORMS provides a user access to catalogs that are stored on the user""s own intranet system, and the Ariba ORMS channels the users to products and services from preferred suppliers while simplifying the numerous processes (e.g., approval within the organization) of acquiring operating resources. In addition, users have cross-process visibility and are able to reference relevant information regarding the status of their requests.
The capture of all operating resources spending is important to achieving significant savings in acquiring these resources. Typically, different spending categories require unique procurement processes to request, approve and purchase the items of interest. The Ariba ORMS facilitates an easy to understand presentation of each process to the user, so complexity is minimized, while still allowing the enterprise to model sophisticated process scenarios. In addition, internal acquisition processes are available within the Ariba ORMS, such as I/T service requests or new employee kits. Complete operating resources spend and process capture drives maximum savings, as well as allowing for global collaborative buying across the enterprise.
A large number of large corporations require a heterogeneous enterprise resource planning systems environment. The seamless integration of these systems into the Ariba ORMS, as shown in FIG. 2, facilitates networked information flow and provides for complete leverage of important information such as financial, human resource, security, inventory, messaging and other related data.
The adoption rate of business-to-business eCommerce systems is rapidly growing. In particular, the Ariba ORMS is a leader among global 2000 and mid-size corporation.
Ariba""s customer success and market leadership has created a critical mass of buying organizations that represent tens of billions of dollars of annual spending on operating resources. Each Ariba customer represents a network of people, systems and processes that govern the acquisition of operating resources for their enterprise.
The critical mass of buyers and the associated buying power has led to exponential supplier demand for participation. The supplier demand drives requirements for massive integration of product and service content. In addition, eCommerce transactions such as purchase orders, acknowledgements, change orders, order and ship status and invoices require massively scalable integration.
Existing solutions to large-scale integration of supplier content and eCommerce transaction integration include:
Peer-to-Peer Networks
Many-to-One-to-Many Networks
Single Standard Networks
Peer-to-Peer Networks, such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), connect individual buying and selling organizations in a one-to-one manner. Electronic commerce has traditionally based interoperability on these one-to-one connections and Peer-to-Peer Networks have been quite effective for acquiring production and manufacturing resources.
However, operating resources are non-manufacturing goods and services acquired from thousands of suppliers, each with widely varying technical capabilities. Therefore, while Peer-to-Peer networks facilitate connections between buyers and suppliers, they are difficult to scale across the thousands of organizations that supply operating resources. This is due to the complexity and cost of establishing each one-to-one communication scenario.
Many-to-One-to-Many Networks provide a central repository or location for all content and transaction activity All buying activities are channeled through the central hub while all supplier interactions flow from the central hub. These networks aggregate supplier content in order to provide an effective means to find products or services of interest across multiple selling organizations. Aggregation of supplier content relies on normalization of the content where multi-sourcing of items is required. A system that aggregates supplier content in a public computer system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,542 to King, Jr. et al.
Data normalization is the process of defining common descriptions and attributes for the same or similar products offered by different suppliers. To perform this function effectively, domain expertise must exist in the industry or product area requiring normalization. Lack of domain expertise creates content aggregation challenges for Many-to-One-to-Many Networks.
While providing central control for the aggregation of supplier content, Many-to-One-to-Many Networks create bottlenecks that significantly limit the scalability of the network. These bottlenecks act as xe2x80x9cchoke pointsxe2x80x9d for the network unless effective and efficient aggregation techniques based on relevant domain-based content expertise are used. Furthermore, at some point the amount of data to be aggregated simply becomes too large to be effectively and efficiently aggregated by any method. This type of system that aggregates supplier content simply will not easily scale to support a general system, since there are literally hundreds of thousands of suppliers and billions (or even perhaps, trillions) of items. In addition, as a practical business matter, it is a disadvantage to suppliers to be at the mercy of a third party to provide a selling interface to their customers. (They want to xe2x80x9cownxe2x80x9d their customers"" buying experience with them.) Also, as a practical technical matter, suppliers must do a lot of work to xe2x80x9cconformxe2x80x9d to the aggregation system.
As for single standard networks, although an ideal theoretical concept, the adoption of a single standard for content and eCommerce transaction integration is highly unlikely. Several industry and geography-based initiatives exist to create common semantics for content and common formats for transactions, resulting in multiple standards. These initiatives seek to optimize communication, distribution and connection efficiencies within the industry or geographic region in addition to reducing associated costs.
The present invention is directed to method and apparatus providing a large scale eCommerce integrated buyer-seller product and/or service procurement system including identification, offer, order and payment transactions.
The invention includes providing to buyers index information and directions to distributed supplier information which identifies goods and services of suppliers and providing ordering services to buyers and sellers by means of a global computer information network. The invention also includes order transaction routing, multiple protocol support for exchanging content and transaction information and for converting an order into the supplier""s preferred transaction protocol.
Broadly stated the present invention is directed to a system for electronically ordering items having at least one supplier computer system storing at least one catalog containing items offered by the supplier and a customer computer system with the improvement of a public computer system comprising an index to the items in the catalogs on the at least one supplier computer system, means for querying the index on the public computer system for a desired item in response to a request for the desired item from the customer computer system and means for generating a pointer for the customer computer system to catalog information about the desired item in the catalog on the at least one supplier system which has been identified by the query of the index.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, the public computer system includes means responsive to an order from the customer computer system for electronically ordering the desired item based upon the catalog information about the desired item accessed by the customer from the at least one supplier computer system.
The invention also includes the method of electronically ordering item which are listed in a catalog on one supplier""s computer system for a customer having its own computer system and utilizing a public computer system comprising the steps of creating and storing on the public computer system an index to the items in the catalogs on the supplier computer system, querying the index on the public computer system for a desired item in response to a request for the desired item from the customer computer system and generating a pointer for the customer computer system to catalog information about the desired item in the catalog on the supplier system.
Another aspect of the present invention is utilizing the method set forth in the preceding paragraph and then ordering the desired item from the public computer system responsive to an order to the public computer system from the customer computer system.